{"id":2146429,"date":"2025-11-10T12:44:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T12:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2146429"},"modified":"2025-11-10T12:44:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T12:44:33","slug":"blood-orange-at-ally-pally-review-grief-hope-and-vulnerability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/blood-orange-at-ally-pally-review-grief-hope-and-vulnerability\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood Orange at Ally Pally review: ‘Grief, hope and vulnerability’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2018Grief England youth & music\u2019 is emblazoned on the t-shirts sold at the merch stall in the foyer of Alexandra Palace<\/a>. If you don\u2019t want to read the rest of this piece, the t-shirt works as a pithy, to-the-point review of Essex Honey, Dev Hynes\u2019s fifth studio album as Blood Orange. It\u2019s a record that saw Hynes journey to his childhood home of Ilford – just 11 miles from tonight\u2019s venue – to reckon with grief and memory after the loss of his mother.<\/p>\n

The record is a brilliant, heart-rending exploration of his childhood and growing up in Essex<\/a>, the music jumping between past and present, filled with both joy and sorrow. The songs feel not only like a processing of death, but also a celebration of life – the sadness and loss alchemised into a kind of hope.<\/p>\n

And tonight\u2019s show – the third of four he\u2019s played in the round in Alexandra Palace\u2019s intimate, ornate Victorian theatre – echoed that. It was a performance filled with moments of stillness and melancholy but also hope, beauty and movement.<\/p>\n

Throughout the show Hynes flits between instruments – from keyboard to guitar to cello – while the band of Eva Tolkin, Ian Isiah and Tariq Saleem Al-Sabir\u2019s voices and instruments swirl and mingle to create something vital, vibrant and alive.<\/p>\n

Tracks that feel hazy, gentle and gorgeously softlit on record feel harder and more kinetic here, the band adding a propulsive crunch to Countryside, Look At You and the extraordinary The Last of England.<\/p>\n

The Field\u2019s ecstatic, propulsive warmth is a highlight, as Daniel Caesar joins the band on stage, yet it\u2019s often when it\u2019s Hynes performing alone that it becomes most affecting. There was a haunting cover of How Soon Is Now? with just Hynes and his cello, and an acoustic version of \u2018The Train (King’s Cross)\u2019 was strikingly, achingly poignant – his tender voice shaking with vulnerability as he sang \u201cCan’t turn back and the worst is yet to come\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Blood<\/span><\/div>\n

Blood Orange (Henry Croston)<\/p>\n

And though most of the set is drawn from Essex Honey we also had tracks like You’re Not Good Enough from his debut album as well as the swaggering funk of Charcoal Baby and Champagne Coast – a track that has become his biggest hit thanks to TikTok virality and got the biggest reaction of the night.<\/p>\n

Hynes said little between songs except to acknowledge \u201cThis is very cool and very crazy\u201d – his music speaking for him – and it ended with the starkly exquisite I Can Go, the stage bathed in pitch blackness. As the band departed Hynes is left on stage on his own to sing Time Will Tell alone – the lyrics reflecting on the passage of time and the uncertainty it brings. \u201cTime will tell if you can figure this and work it out\u2026 It is what it is\u201d. It feels like a fitting thought to leave us with after the journey of reflection he\u2019s taken us on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Grief England youth & music\u2019 is emblazoned on the t-shirts sold at the merch stall in the foyer of Alexandra Palace. If you don\u2019t want to read the rest of this piece, the t-shirt works as a pithy, to-the-point review of Essex Honey, Dev Hynes\u2019s fifth studio album as Blood Orange. It\u2019s a record that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2146430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[410097,410096,325748],"class_list":["post-2146429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-alexandra-palace","tag-dev-hynes","tag-fifth-studio-album"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Blood-Orange-at-Ally-Pally-review-Grief-hope-and-vulnerability.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2146429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2146431,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146429\/revisions\/2146431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2146430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2146429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2146429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2146429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}